Monday, 23 February 2015

Jupiter Ascending Royal Bridal Dress Crown / Headdress DIY Tutorial.

Here is my step by step guide on how to build Jupiter Jones crown from the wedding scene of the movie. You can purchase the Crown HERE. I've also done a Makeup Tutorial as well.

What you will Need:

Clay finish card stock: This is the type of card stock you get in north American comic book but you cand also get at craft stores. It has a natural smooth finish on both sides and it take beautifully to metallic paint

Silver spray paint or silver enamel paints. Both work but I had to use the enamel as it was freezing up here and you can't use your spray paint outside in these temperatures. The enamel paint also help with touch ups.

Note: I made this crown before more detailed shots where posted, so I will take about the details I could not see each step of the way. ;)

Step 1: Sourcing Flowers!

Red metallic flowers: My flower in this case where originally a fire engine red that came in only 2 sizes from the Dollarama. Large came with 2 layers of petals and the small ones only had 1 layer of petals.

Striped down to petal layer (large, medium, and small). Bottom two flowers are how they originally sold as.

Separated bases and stamens.

I used Design Master 710 Burgundy Colortool Spray to deepened and de-shine these flower petal layers, bases, and stamens. This gives you a richer colour and closer to the shades found in the crown. Once the paint was dry I rearrange the flowers into 3 sizes. Large using mostly large petal layers and 1 smaller layer, Medium used only 2 medium petal layer and one small layer. And the Small flowers used just 2 petals layers.

Finish small and larger flowers (on left) next to the original flowers (on right).

I also cut some of the smaller flowers to make extra small ones. Seen in Step 9.

Note: You can also make the flower from metallic card/plastic stock as well by cutting and folding each layer of the flower. But bulk flowers are way cheaper!

Note: The red flowers in the crown don't actually match the dresses. But colour wise they did a good job at getting the right shades of red. ;)

This new close up shows that there are a few silver/crystal flowers but I'm not sure if they where bough or fabricated. I counted 6 in the new head shots.

Step 2: Sourcing ferns and twigs!

Originally I was making and paint there ferns and twigs/branches but I didn't like how dull they look!

So I raided again my local Dolllarama's and found 1 fern bundle, 1 branch bundle, and 1 lace like leaf bundle. All of which where spray paint with silver glitter and have large silver dots on them. You will see me adding them at Step 6.

Step 3: Making Metal Lace!

The original design was based off of a 3 pairs of earrings from finchittidafinch design. These where also computer cut out into mirror acrylic sheets for the crown. But since I don't have access to that fancy technology I'm going with card stock and hand punching.

I recreated the designs by tracing two of the piece I found for the towers on the crown. They're not 100% accurate as I was working of of tini tiny web images.

Next I printed them out to the scale I thought they where and taped them down to the card stock I was using. I basically use the Xacto knife to punch out each side of the smaller details and cut the edge of the larger wholes. Your going to need to replace your blades frequently as the tip needs to be super sharp to cut the card stock cleanly without corner burs.

Here is my WIP video on how it but the metal lace designs out.

Click the youtube icon to view in larger screen. ;)

Lifting the template to show the centre cut out sections.

Finish metal lace with paint.

Step 4: Make your Base for the Crown.

Start by measuring you head width wise to get a general width of the crown base. Cut 3 layer of wonderflex out in a rounded rectangle shape.

Using a heating element (I used my stove) heat the first layer, then fit the curve of your own head. Once that layer is cooled down place you plastic headband on top of that layer.

Next heat the second layer up and form it over the head band and bottom layer of the base on your head. Repeat with the last top layer for strength.

At this point your 3 layer of wonderflex has cooled down on you head. Remove the structure and trim any access lip of the base shape. Once the shape is cleaned up further, heat up the edge of the base again to seal the layers together.

Next using scrape pieces of Wonderflex secure your two large 12 gauge wires to the side of the base structure. This will be a slower process as you will have to hold both the wire and scrap pieces in place to the cool solid again to fuse to the base. I did about 7 layers total to form a proper base for these larger / longer wire for the branches later on.

Now that the base structure is done, make sure when you paint the base silver to try and avoid the exposed head band area.

Note: I later trimmed both the front and back of this base as it was too deep for my head.

Step 5: Start adding the Metal Lace.

Next is to add the larger towers to the back row of the crown. I curved the base of these as I Hot Glued them down to the crown base. This gives them a more ridged base so that the top of the towers didn't wobble too badly.

Next added my smaller towers and again curved the base as I glued them down.

Step 6: Start adding the Silver Foliage.

After arranging the silver towers I started to fill in the gaps with silver branches and silver lace leaves. I use a dollop of hot glue to form a base for each segment of branch or leaf.

Step 7: Start adding the Flowers.

Next I started to add flowers at the end of 14 gauge wire to suspend them around the towers. At the end of these flowers I coiled the end of wire to make a base so that I could hot glue down to the crown base.

Step 8: More Flowers and Beading.

I continued to add more branches of flowers. The two 12 gauge wire that are pre-built into the crown base I stated to add ferns, leaf lace and smaller flowers to match the original movie shots arrangement I was working off of.

I also starting to create hanging beading on the right side flowers. I used floral wire to secure the beads and rhinestones at both ends of 1 wire and wrapping the centre around the flower base.

The original headdress used rhinestone and Swarovski Lily or 6525 28mm Wave Pendant Crystal AB as the drop crystals. There not the cheapest so I went with some drop pendent in crystal and red to get the feel of those crystals.

Step 9: Hairline Flowers and more Beads.

I then stated to add flowers to the lace leafs and tower and using what I have left of small, large, and medium flowers it filled in the hairline on the crown.

I also took the time to hang more rhinestones and beads off the perimeter flowers.

Step 10: Rhinestones on Flowers.

You can tell in the movie stills there was bling on the flowers as well, so I used 3 sizes of red rhinestones on the flowers based on size of the flower to give them some bling. The stamens on the flowers already had glitter. ;) This really does help to really round out the shimmery elements on this crown.

Finished!

I added some left over flower to the back side of the crown but it's all finished at this point!